


"If this is it, it is, I suppose."

by chrysalisdreams



Series: Five Scenes that Could Have Happened in TBEA (And One That Did Not) [1]
Category: Tangled (2010), Tangled: The Series (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Spoilers, Tangled Before Ever After, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 03:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10267235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysalisdreams/pseuds/chrysalisdreams
Summary: One-shot set from the end of the first day Rapunzel was united with her parents, to the events in the Disney Channel Original Movie that starts Tangled, The Series.Rapunzel, Eugene, and the Queen and King of Corona may not like every aspect of their new reality together, but they are all trying.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this is sure to be canon fodder as soon as we see Eugene and Frederic "talk about it later." I've been trying to get an idea of where their heads are at, and this is just one possibility.  
> EDIT: After original posting, I realized that TBEA establishes that Rapunzel is her real name, not a name given by Gothel. I've taken that bit out.

“No.” Rapunzel spoke to her royal parents with the same conviction she had used in confronting Mother Gothel. “Eugene is staying here, in the castle. I won’t let you send him away.”

Queen Arianna took in a small breath. She held it, watching King Frederic from the corner of her eye. He had paled slightly at the disrespectful tone. Now color was flushing back into his face. His beard hid much of it, but she could see that his temper had risen.

She made a tiny sigh as she released her breath, only loud enough for her king to hear. He heard it. She saw him force himself to calm down, shoulders squaring back, nostrils flaring with a deep inhalation before he spoke.

“Well enough. We can see how important to you this is, Rapunzel.” 

Rapunzel clutched Eugene’s hand a little tighter. She stayed as stiff as a bundle of twigs. One twig alone broke easily, but a bundle of sticks was stronger than its sum. In her heart she felt a connection to these people, this queen and king that were her mother and father, but she had known them for only hours. In comparison, she had known Eugene for a lifetime. Her lifetime, and his; the moment she had thought he had died, she had died, too; when the flower bloomed and he opened his eyes, she had been reborn, too. It had been the day her life began.

Eugene squeezed back. Her hand was a life-giving touch of sunshine. Cold sweat ran down his spine as he faced the king and queen whose jewel he had stolen. And whose jewel he had returned to them, he reminded himself again, anything to keep himself from trying to talk his way out of a hanging, because he knew that if he opened his mouth, he wouldn’t be able to stop babbling. That was a real downside of turning over a new leaf, of being the orphan boy who rescued a princess instead of Flynn Rider, the thief who had been sent to heaven shortly after being stabbed in the kidney by a creepy crone.

King Frederic couldn’t avoid noticing the joined hands. “We will find a suitable room for your…” his throat constricted. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed his emotion, a mix of fear and woe, tinted with anger. “Friend,” he finished. “You will stay here, Eugene,” he said to the man. It was easier to use his given name instead of the surname that betrayed his low birth. “I am certain you will find suitable occupation here as well.”

Finally letting herself relax, Rapunzel felt herself go weak in the knees. She caught herself on Eugene’s shoulder. She leaned on him for support. That she brushed the side of her face against his chin, and snuggled her head into his neck, that was for a different kind of support, but one she needed just as much.

Eugene caught her around the waist. He turned his head in toward her. His lips had almost touched her forehead when he remembered his surroundings. Queen Arianna didn’t have to clear her throat, but when she did, and then stepped forward to take her daughter, Eugene surrendered Rapunzel.

“You’re tired,” the queen said, brushing a lock of Rapunzel’s cropped, brown hair away from the girl’s eyes. “Come with me and rest a while.”

“I want to stay,” Rapunzel said to her mother. Her voice betrayed exhaustion from an overwhelming day.

Queen Arianna cradled Rapunzel’s face in her hands, as she had done in their first minutes of meeting. “Don’t push yourself too hard. No need to rush things. We have a whole future,” she soothed.

After the queen led Rapunzel away, it was just Eugene and Rapunzel’s father. And no mistake of it, Eugene could sense that he was with her father, more so than with the king. The cold terror that had been in his sweat glands decided to move into his crotch.

“So,” King Frederic began.

Yep. Right into the family jewels, Eugene thought. That “so” had the weight of a steel axe blade. In the first hour of reunion, the king and queen had been profuse in their thanks. A few hours later, and the monarchs had gifted him with a monetary reward, a handsome one, that Eugene still felt wobbly about having refused. Now, and the end of the day, now the new reality had started to settle in. Rapunzel wanted Eugene to be part of her new family. Eugene wanted Rapunzel.

It was crystal clear that King Frederic was not on the same page of that particular fairytale, not in regards to Eugene.

The king’s voice echoed in the grand room. “What are your intentions toward my daughter?”

Flynn Rider had heard that question before. It was usually followed by a quick lie and a quicker exit. Eugene started to raise his hands, a very Flynn gesture of waving away responsibility, but he caught himself. He could almost feel King Frederic’s large hands closing around his throat. No, this man was Rapunzel’s father, the father of the woman Eugene loved more than his own life. “I love Rapunzel more than my own life, Sir, Your Highness,” Eugene stumbled to say. “My intention is to protect her and love her, for as long as she will have me.” The sweat wasn’t cold but it was drenching his clothes.

“She seems certain about you, Eugene. Is she right about you? Are you a good enough for her?” Moisture glared on the surface of the king’s eyes.

Sympathetic with the king, a surprised Eugene felt emotion tighten in his chest. “Not good enough. No one ever could deserve her. But I will try my hardest to be.” Eugene collected himself. “She’s strong, King Frederic, and her life hasn’t been easy. But none of that darkness got to her. She’s like a fresh breath of air, but she’s a grown woman, too, who knows what she wants. She’s pure, and good, and overflowing with kindness. Right now, she needs friends that she can trust.”

“It’s her purity,” King Frederic said with loaded stillness, “that troubles my serenity, young man.” His eyes held cold warning not to dissemble.

Eugene had to look away. That’s what it came down to, he thought. In the tower, in their expressions of true love, they had not been a lowborn nobody and a the heir of Corona. Now, they were. That’s how everyone else would see them. Even if Eugene Fitzherbert conveniently disappeared, the rumors would be there, about how the princess spent unchaperoned nights with a known ladies’ man. Some of the gossip would even be true even if the source was not.

“I want her to be my wife,” Eugene said, scared beyond measure by what he was admitting, “by kingdom law, too. I want to marry her. I want to marry Rapunzel.”

“I’m a practical man,” the king intoned in a statement that brooked no argument. “I will do what needs to be done, no matter how unpleasant.”

“I get that,” Eugene dared. He had done what needed to be done, too.

“Prove yourself good enough,” the king said. “When she accepts a proposal of marriage, I will accept it.” He talked over Eugene’s unguarded surprise. “As her betrothed, your continuing presence in the public eye can be condoned. Until then, we expect your behavior to be above reproach. You understand my meaning,” he warned.

Eugene resisted the urge to bow, afraid it would imply mockery. He was figuring out that the rule of good behavior was simple, really: if it felt like habit, then it was a Flynn habit, and something to avoid. Flynn Rider was dead. Long live Eugene Fitzherbert.

o

Six months later, after his failed proposal, Eugene found himself thinking about the conversation he had had with King Frederic. Six months. Eugene thought he’d already taken too long. He had chosen the ring months ago. Along with a tailor, cobbler, and his choice of manservants -- it had been Rapunzel’s idea to hire on the pub thugs -- Rapunzel’s father had given Eugene the opportunity to pick a ring from ancestral heirlooms. Eugene had been too thrilled with the possibility of giving Rapunzel a piece of her own history, forever linked with his love, for his pride to protest. After all, he wasn’t a thief anymore. How else could he have offered a diamond with even a quarter of the sparkle she had in her eyes?

Half a year. But Rapunzel had acted with shock, not with the wholehearted enthusiasm he had daydreamed about receiving when he was down on bended knee before her. He had expected to surprise everyone else, even King Frederic since the king didn’t know that Eugene had chosen that night to ask for Rapunzel’s hand in marriage. He hadn’t expected to surprise Rapunzel.

Reeling from the sting of getting it wrong, he went to the one person he could talk to about it: Rapunzel herself. And she wasn’t there. Searching the castle, he ran into King Frederic. The king still intimidated him; King Frederic was a tall, broad-shouldered, man. Over the months, however, Rapunzel’s father had shown his kind and loving side as well as his imposing one.

“Sir, about that proposal,” Eugene said after babbling on for several minutes to convince the king not to go to Rapunzel’s room and discover that Rapunzel was not in it. “That didn’t go as planned.”

“We’ll discuss that later. Much later,” the king said.

Eugene chose to take whatever reassurance he could from that reply. Then he spent the rest of a sleepless night searching and worrying and wondering, over and over, how had he lost track of what Rapunzel wanted? And even if this was how things were, they didn’t have to stay that way.

The king retired to his rooms, thinking and rethinking the same thought. As a man and father, he had to accept that some things were as they were. As a king, he had authority and, in fact, a duty to command how things would be. The queen met him in their rooms, and they talked for a time about Eugene’s proposal and Rapunzel’s denial, about the terse words the king had had with his daughter throughout the dinner, and how Rapunzel seemed to be suffering a setback in her progress on the path to be princess. She was stumbling under the pressure, Queen Arianna suggested. What Rapunzel needed now was some room to breath.

Meanwhile, out in the full moon’s light, Rapunzel stepped with care through a pond, looking at the reflection of fireflies blinking over the water and slowly putting disorderly thoughts away. She, too, was wondering. She wondered how a life that suddenly seemed constrictingly small could still feel too big to take in. She considered the silver disc mirrored in the pond, then looked up and contemplated the moon’s softened light. The moon’s light was from the sun, not gone, only hidden by the curve of the earth.

The truth, she decided, was only hidden for now. It would come to her, flow out from inside her just as her memories had done when she realized that she was the lost princess. Like the day, eventually, it would wake.

 


End file.
